If you missed Jon Snow monstering Alistair Darling, watch here—absolutely brilliant: and totemic. When even Mr Snow isn’t buying, then Darling has been truly rumbled. Darling’s answers were all nonsense, but here are the top Snow questions.
1) Just eight weeks since your last budget, what has changed in the economy to warrant this extraordinary tax shift? Deteriorating economic conditions, says Darling
2) “Suggests a cascade of events that is almost out of control” says Snow. Waffle in response.
3) “This is a political decision: it is about politics not economics. When I spoke to he PM three weeks ago, he couldn’t engage with the idea that there was a problem with the 10p,” says Snow. We can afford to do it this year, says Darling. [Eh? By going cap in hand to the City to borrow £2.7bn which is, of course, a delayed tax?]
4) “You have a PM who couldn’t engage with the 10p problem. You were going to lose the Finance Bill” Well, says Darling, faced with the fact that people inside and outside the Commons said we have it wrong “the obvious thing to do is respond to that.” said Darling.
5) “Within a few days of becoming Chancellor you told the FT you will never take knee-jerk action on taxes. We will either do it in a Budget or pre-Budget Report.” What happened?” Well, I wanted to legislate…
6) “You were going to lose the finance bill, that’s your problem”. Darling says he makes no apology for helping people. But apologies do come. “Of course I’m sorry that there are people in that position”, says Darling. “They want candour, they want you then to sort it out and get on with it.”
And here is the best from Snow. “All this does, in the end, sum up a complete shambles. You nearly lost the Finance Bill, the Prime Minister could not focus on the reality that the 10p was a problem. Then you have had to do what no Chancellor in our lifetime has ever had to do – change income tax arrangements between budgets. Why should people trust you after this, if things can go so badly wrong?”
A while ago, I took issue with Snow’s questioning. He has redeemed himself in full tonight. I’m off to do a Richard Bacon phone-in on today’s events on Five Live at 10.20pm—I’ll report back on the mood.
UPDATE: It’s hard to think which Prime Minister, other than Gordon Brown, could unveil a £2.7bn tax cut and still be attacked for it. But the Radio Five phone-in I just did had people up and down the country calling in to trash HIM. Jim in Leicester (a Labour voter) said it smacked of desperation – that Brown could do a hundred things and it wouldn’t matter now. He’s lost it. Tony said “I used to vote Labour but I’m all right now” and that the “boffins in the Treasury don’t know what they are doing”. There were a few of anti-Tory calls, claims that they’d keep people on £1.50/hour minimum wage, etc. But, all told, bad news for Brown and Darling.
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